1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mobile terminal, and in particular, to a method of managing a user database stored in a mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals as a communication means have become a requisite for modern life. Users of mobile terminals now communicate with various people for various reasons using the mobile terminals. The users have now demanded additional functions for increasing convenience of use besides the basic function of a mobile terminal, which is call connection with another communication terminal. A phone book function and a call history function are examples of two of these additional functions.
In general, a large amount of telephone numbers can now be registered in a phone book, and a user can search for the registered telephone numbers if necessary. However, the number of telephone numbers with which the user frequently communicates is actually way less than the number of the registered telephone numbers. In particular, telephone numbers never used for communication for a long time can exist, and there is no way to confirm this. This means that a memory space of a mobile terminal is inefficiently wasted and that a user database is not smoothly managed.
If a communication service has been recently used, a user can determine when the call was performed with a telephone number related to the communication service through the call history function. The call history function temporarily stores call history information related to various communication services accessed through the mobile terminal and provides the stored call history information if the user demands. For a communication service requiring call connection, such as a circuit switching call, a video call, or a push-to-talk (PTT) call, the call history information typically includes a telephone number of a party with which a call was performed, a call termination time, and a total call time. For a message service, the call history information typically includes a telephone number of another party and a received/transmitted time.
The call history information, for instance, is provided by a mobile terminal displaying a call history list on a display unit through a menu such as a recent call list. If the telephone number of another party is a telephone number that has already been registered in a phone book, a user name registered in the phone book is also displayed on the display unit. Herein, the call history information is temporarily and finitely stored in the mobile terminal. For example, around 60 to 200 call histories may be stored based on a recent call termination time, and every time when a new call history is generated, the oldest call history information is automatically deleted.
Thus, the call history function allows a user to determine a call time for a person who the user has recently communicated with, but an old call record in the call history, which has already been deleted since the call time was too old, cannot be determined. Moreover, for a user who frequently makes phone calls, the period of time for viewing call records in the call history can be as short as a few days. In addition, to determine when a call was made with a specific person in the call history that has not been deleted yet, the user must review the entire call history list one by one. In addition, for people who have not been communicated with for a long time, even if they are registered in the phone book, the user cannot determine that there has been no call activity with those people for a long time.
As described above, a process of using and managing a user database, such as phone book information and call history information causes a user inconvenience.